Saturday-November 17

Small group work sessions continued in the morning, at the same time that the second open hearing was taking place. Horace E. Tate, NCLIS Commissioner, presided. During the luncheon, two guest speakers, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, and George Schrader, City Manager of Dallas, Texas, discussed pertinent library and information issues within state and city governments. Warren G. Hill, Member of the White House Conference Advisory Committee, presided.

Small group work sessions and hearings continued in the afternoon. The third open hearing was presided over by William J. Welsh, Deputy Librarian of Congress, who serves on the Commission for Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress.

James H. Boren, Founder and President of the International Association of Bureaucrats, was speaker at the evening banquet, presided over by Philip A. Sprague, NCLIS Commissioner. Mr. Boren admonished the delegates on the rules for being a good bureaucrat.

In the evening, the delegates met in their five theme groups to begin discussing and voting on the large number of resolutions that had come out of the small group work sessions. Theme Resolutions Committees continued working during the night.

Sunday-November 18

Ecumenical religious services at the Conference site, conducted under the auspices of the Chaplain's Office, U.S. Department of Defense, were attended by more than 200 persons. Ralph Nader of the Public Citizen was guest speaker at Sunday's luncheon, and was introduced by Nicholas Johnson, Chairman, National Citizens Communications Lobby and Member of the White House Conference Advisory Committee.

The theme sessions were reconvened to review the work of the Theme Resolutions Committees. In the afternoon, a general session, chaired by Judge Edmund Reggie of Louisiana, was convened to consider the recommendations from each theme session. The General Resolutions Committee was given responsibility for further synthesis of recommendations.

In the evening, delegates were entertained at special receptions as guests of the embassies of Canada, India, the Ivory Coast, the Organization of American States and the Department of State.

Monday-November 19

The final general session, chaired by Judge Reggie, was convened in the morning. Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress, addressed the delegates, making a forceful distinction between knowledge and information. The body then approved 64 resolutions (See Appendix VIII),

and also established a Committee of the Conference to oversee the final draft of the text.

A Joint Congressional Hearing took place at the Conference site. Testimony from 10 individuals, two from each of the five theme areas, was heard by 10 Members of Congress.

The Conference concluded with a pre-luncheon address by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Policy, in which he announced the creation of an Interagency Task Force to Review the Conference Resolutions in order to help the President with his response and recommendations to Congress. At lunch, Conference Chairman, Charles Benton, reported on some of the major resolutions that had been passed, thanked the delegates, staff and other participants for their Herculean efforts, and the Conference ended with a roll call of the states and the singing of "God Bless America."

Outreach

During the two-year period prior to the Conference, more than 3,500 newspaper, magazine, and newsletter articles appeared in the national press. Articles appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Library Journal, American Libraries, Los Angeles Times, and Time Magazine, among others.

At the Conference itself, a daily newspaper, WHC Update, was published, a recording studio was set up where delegates and alternates could make 30-second interview tapes to be mailed to hometown radio stations, and delegates and alternates received press releases designed for publication in their hometown newspapers.

Conference Information Center

One of the fundamental tenets of this White House Conference was that people need accurate and timely information in order to make informed decisions. Thus, the Conference Information Center was designed to provide information services to delegates in support of the work they were expected to accomplish at the Conference. It also served to provide a functional demonstration of how the resources of library and information services could meet people's information needs. The Center was on site at the Washington Hilton Hotel and was organized into four main activity areas: Information on Demand, Conference Communications, State Resolutions, and Blind and Physically Handicapped Media.

The Information on Demand Area was the focal point of the Center. It was designed, staffed, and coordinated by a working committee of administrative and reference staff of the Library of Congress. Its primary function was to act as a library reference and information service for the delegates. It contained a wide variety of information resources, including: more than 100 computerized databases; a refer

ence book collection of more than 400 titles; general information files relating to the five major themes and issues of the Conference; newswire service from the Associated Press and the United Press International; access to collections of both local and distant library and information centers via telephone and telefacsimile; and the equipment necessary to access these resources, such as computer terminals, printers, telefacsimile machines, microfilm and microfiche reader printers, cassette tape recorders and photocopy machines.

The Information on Demand Area was staffed by more than 100 professional librarians representing libraries and information centers throughout the Nation. Together, they answered more than 1,000 delegate questions during the five days of the Conference.

The Conference Communications Area consisted of the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) area and the Conference message center. EIES, a computer-based communication system, allowed delegates to keep track of the progress of other work groups. In addition, a daily newsletter produced on EIES made information about the Conference available on-line to any user of the EIES system throughout the country.

The Conference message center included not only personal message boxes for each Conference delegate and alternate, but also an "electronic bulletin board." This closed-circuit television system provided a mechanism for posting daily Conference schedules, lastminute changes, and special events. Any Conference participant could use this system to post Conference-related information.

The State Resolutions Area provided on-line access to the more than 3,000 resolutions produced at the state and territorial pre-White House Conferences. Using the INQUIRE Database Management System, provided by the National Library of Medicine, volunteer

staff performed searches for information needed by delegates. The system could locate and retrieve state resolutions on any topic.

The Blind and Physically Handicapped Media Area provided ondemand copies of Conference-related information on audio-cassettes or in braille format for handicapped delegates and alternates. In addition, talking-book machines were available for loan to blind delegates. This area also provided access to two of the latest developments in computer technology for handicapped persons: the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which transforms printed material into synthesized speech, and a Digicassette machine capable of producing braille transcript from the output of the computer terminal. Among the services provided by this area was the complete recording of the resolutions that were taken to the floor for final discussion and voting on the last day of the Conference. Facilities and the 16 volunteer staff in this area were made available to the Conference by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress. All sessions were “signed" for delegates and alternates who were deaf.

Resolutions

As indicated earlier, delegates approved a total of 64 resolutions 25 by voice vote and 39 by paper ballot. These resolutions were reviewed and approved for publication by the Committee of the Conference at its meeting in Chicago on January 5, 1980.

The resolutions call for changes of many kinds, and they also set some major goals: to reshape library and information services to serve the people in more useful and convenient ways, to maintain local control of these services, and to obtain greater economy and accountability from the institutions and organizations that provide the services. Resolutions urge libraries to take an increased role in literacy training; in improving access to information for all, including ethnic minority groups, blind persons, physically handicapped persons, and others who are not adequately served. They favor increased activity by the United States to encourage the free flow of information among nations. Many endorse the idea of the library as both a total community information center and as an independent learning center. Generally, the resolutions support the concept of the library as essential to a civilized society, a concern the government must view with high priority in the decision-making process. Delegates to the Conference also emphasized the importance of technology and considered ways this Nation can use it to improve library and information services. They discussed and refined such concepts as the linking of public telecommunications and the Postal Service with a new, expanded role for libraries.

The full text of the resolutions, together with detailed elements for a comprehensive national library and information services act and an outline for a proposed National Library and Information Services Act, are contained in the Final Report of the White House Conference.